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Welcome to the making sense podcast. This is Sam Harris. Okay. Well, in the last housekeeping I said I would say something about the RFK phenomenon. I'm not going to spend too much time on this at the moment. I don't think it merits and especially deep treatment but I think it's something that should be said because RFK has been everywhere of late and I
Have him on this podcast. If one point of mutual friend, reached out offering to put us together and I declined for the time being, you know, perhaps I will talk to him at some point, but I hope it doesn't come to that. But he's spoken to Rogen, and, Jordan Pederson, and very wise, and Bill Maher, and Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson. I think he was on the all in podcast and some of the hosts there through a fundraiser for him, for his presidential campaign.
Pain. All of these people are friends or friends of friends or former friends except for Tucker Carlson who as I pointed out a few podcasts back is just a well-established liar. I don't know how anyone is holding him up as a an honest broker of information but all these people to one or another degree failed to understand the problem with platforming a person.
Like Robert Kennedy jr. And this term platforming is now stigmatized as somehow being at odds with a commitment to free speech, right? Only someone who doesn't support Free Speech, or who doesn't understand that sunlight is the best? Disinfectant, would worry about quote, platforming a person like RFK or anyone else, right? Why not just talk to anybody? What could go wrong? What are you afraid of admittedly? This becomes somewhat
Mandible. When a person is running for president and polling least according to one poll higher than any other person in the Democratic party. So yes when someone is garnering that kind of public support or apparent support it is newsworthy and the argument for talking to them is easier to make. But then you have to do the hard work of real journalism where you can't just put a microphone in front of the guy for a few hours and hope that your
Shit detector is going to go off at the right time and the truth is even if you do your homework you can't know in real-time you certainly can't establish in real time that someone is lying, right? And so with certain people and I'm afraid to say that RFK appears to be one of these people, there's such a pattern of misrepresentation with respect to facts that you just have to decide in advance. That a person can't be trusted.
To speak honestly, about important topics. And so yes, it becomes irresponsible to platform such people and I'll show you an example of this in a moment. But the general point to make here is that there's no good reason to talk to RFK about vaccines and vaccine safety and vaccine science because he's not a scientist and he's not a doctor.
He's a lawyer and an activist and as a lawyer and an activist he has for the last 20 years, worked rather hard to create a mood of Suspicion with respect to the scientific establishment. Although ironically he's also an environmental activist and is Michael Shermer has pointed out. He sings an entirely different tune with respect to establish science on the topic of climate change. He goes on and on about trusting the scientific consensus there.
And anyone who doesn't is a crank, in fact, worse at crank, who should be jailed RFK has actually said that. Anyone who spreads misinformation about climate change, should be jailed right in particular, the Koch brothers on his account. They should be prosecuted for reckless endangerment. Now RFK is a lawyer and he's well aware that we have a First Amendment that protects people, espousing their bad ideas. But he thinks that the relevant corporations and think tanks that don't have personal first.
Edmund protections should be prosecuted and destroyed, right? This is Exxon and Koch Industries and the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation, and the Heartland Institute and the American Enterprise Institute. All of these organizations should be destroyed on his account. And anyone, who's playing the same just asking questions routine. He's playing with respect to vaccines but doing it on the topic of climate change. He wishes we had a law that would allow us to prosecute these people because on his account.
Should be enjoying three Hots and a cot at the Hague where the other war criminals, right? Those are his words. I so all you free speech absolutist to insist upon the wisdom of platform in the sky at every opportunity might want to reflect on his commitment to free speech. Again, this man is an activist and a lawyer and lawyers have very different relationships to making arguments, then scientists do so on each of these podcasts, he
Has spread host of wacky ideas, right? Some of which may in the fullness of time, turn out to be true, but most of which certainly won't write. He blames ssris for mass shootings. He thinks that cell phones cause brain cancer. I think he has also said that Wi-Fi causes brain cancer, but it seems like he's most concerned about cell phones. He thinks they damage the blood-brain barrier and damaged mitochondria. And he also claims to be sitting on
Groundbreaking evidence for all this. He in the past has sounded skeptical that the HIV virus causes AIDS rice, just asking questions there. He said that the pandemic restrictions during covid word of a CIA plot to exert, totalitarian control over our society. Incidentally, he is absolutely sure that the CIA killed, his uncle JFK, and he's pretty sure this CIA killed his father RFK
Okay, but above all he thinks that childhood vaccines in particular, the MMR vaccine causes autism. I'll talk about that in a moment but the problem is that he is tapping into something that is real. And which he I think has appropriately diagnosed. If you listen to him, talk about the pervasive distrust of Institutions at this moment in American history and in particular how the institutions learn
And this distrust in recent years, he's right about all that and this is something I've talked about a lot on the podcast. So, he's messaging into an environment where there is a massive appetite for contrarian takes on more or less. Everything this has been an absolute Boon to the misinformation cult that he has been at the center of for two decades.
And this is the cult of vaccine fear. And again the truth here is complicated because some vaccines have been recalled. Vaccine injury is a real thing. Some vaccines don't work as well as advertised some people can't get vaccinated because they have real allergic reactions. Those people incidentally rely on the rest of us to get vaccinated so they can be protected by herd immunity the covid. Vaccines don't work as well.
As we hoped the herd immunity argument, goes out the window there because they don't prevent transmission with any medical intervention. You can always find horror stories and maybe literally, you can find people who have died from aspirin, and when you're talking about medical interventions on healthy people, especially healthy kids. That can sometimes go wrong. This understandably triggers everyone's deepest fears.
I let them stick a needle in my child and he died every parent's worst nightmare. Okay, so it's into this schema that RFK has been spreading his lies. It seems for 20 years. So while he can be quite compelling in, describing the national mood of distrust listening to him on that topic is like listening to an arsonist report from the scene.
Of a fire which he helped start. He has been part of the problem all along. Okay. So in particular, he thinks that the MMR vaccine causes autism because it has mercury in it or had mercury in it. And that is a claim that has been thoroughly debunked. It's based on what is now acknowledged to be a scientific fraud? Andrew Wakefield published a study in the Lancet in 1998 which has since been retracted.
And I believe 10 or 11 of his 12 co-authors supported the retraction, right? And the evidence for his fraudulence has been established at in at least one book length expose in any case, thimerosal, the preservative with the traces of ethyl Mercury was removed from childhood vaccines 22 years ago, in 2001 to appease the concerns of parents and the rate of autism has not decreased in the meantime.
And also kids who don't get vaccinated, get autism. And it's also a fact that children absorb more methyl Mercury, which is the natural environmental form of mercury, they get more of that in their first months of life than they ever got. Ethyl mercury in the vaccines and methyl mercury has a half-life in the bloodstream, that's 10 times that of ethyl Mercury. So it's more likely to do harm. Anyway, Kennedy continues to spread fear about childhood vaccines and this spurious linked to autism.
Mm. And when he is pushed by any of these podcast hosts, he says he's just asking questions or he just wants the same scientific standards to apply to vaccines as get applied to everything else, right? But he's not just asking questions again, he's spreading a mood of Suspicion and fear, and he is claiming in many cases explicitly, but in every case, at least tacitly that the link between vaccines and autism has been established, and certainly he's never admitting that.
Has been debunked as a fraud, but this fraud gave birth to the modern anti-vaccine movement and this fraudulence appears to animate. What RFK junior is doing now because he is demonstrating a pattern of systematically misrepresenting the conclusions of the studies, he cites and he also just appears to make things up. And the important Point here is that there is no way for a podcast host to know that he's doing that in real time.
He makes claims about the FDA and the CDC that just appear to be flat wrong. Now, I'm going to read you something that Paul offit wrote in 2017 and Stat news, right. Paul offit is a pediatrician and a vaccine expert. I believe he's on the patent for the rotavirus vaccine, and Kennedy has made some crazy claims about this and his relationship to it. Any case off it wrote The Following in response to an interview that
Kennedy gave back in 2017.
This is off at Kennedy. Also said that he wanted to ensure quote that vaccines are subject to the same kind of safety scrutiny and safety testing that other drugs are subject to. And quote. In fact, vaccines are subjected to Greater scrutiny than drugs, much greater the CDC spends, tens of millions of dollars every year on the vaccine safety datalink, a system of linked computerized medical records from several major health maintenance organizations that represents about 7 million Americans
Has 500,000 of whom are children. Nothing like this exists on the drug side. Frankly, if a drug safety datalink existed. The problem with vioxx as a cause of heart attacks might have been picked up much sooner. Perhaps, most outrageous was Kennedy's claim that quote, the Hepatitis B vaccines that are currently approved had fewer than five days of safety testing. That means that if the child had a seizure on the sixth day, it's never seen. If the child dies. It's never seen and quote,
Safety monitoring for the hepatitis B vaccine like all vaccines tested before being licensed involve determining the side effects in the vaccinated and unvaccinated group 4 weeks. After each dose indeed some subsets of vaccinated individuals have been monitored for 30 years after Hepatitis B vaccination and quote.
Okay. So there is off it. Doing some of the laborious and boring work of putting out just one small fire that Kennedy created in an interview, right? Kennedy says that these vaccines aren't tested by the standards of ordinary drugs whereas the opposite has been the case and then recently on the Rogan podcast Kennedy attacked Paul off at by name claiming that he had made 186 million dollar.
Hours with Merck based on his rotavirus vaccine. This is what off at recently wrote in response to that RFK Junior statement about my 186 million dollar deal with Merck was a complete and utter lie and has resulted in hate mail. Physical altercations, with anti-vaccine activists, and three death threats. One caller threatened, my children by falsely, labeling, me, is someone willing to line my pockets at the expense of Children's Health RFK Junior put both,
Me and my family at risk before our rotavirus vaccine was recommended by both the CDC and the World Health Organization for all infants in 2006, rotavirus killed about two thousand children every day in the world. Our vaccine is estimated to save hundreds of lives every day. It's the professional accomplishment of which I am most proud. What exactly has Robert F? Kennedy Jr. Accomplished using the platform of a famous name. He's chosen to lie about vaccines and vaccine safety. No Doubt.
Putting children In Harm's Way. Now he's running for president of the United States and quote. So, again, that's the problem. He's messaging into this fever dream of distrust and Frank fear, and all these other podcasters and people, like Elon Musk are doing the same. What we desperately need at this point.
Is a CDC and an FDA that we can trust and insofar as the basis for trust, has really eroded, we have to fix that. But what we do not need is someone like Elon Musk dunking on vaccine experts in front of 140 million people and putting their lives at risk as he recently did with a different dr. Peter, hotez. And we don't need people like Joe Rogan giving another four hours.
Just asking questions routine because again people like RFK are not just asking questions. They make shit up. Here's an example, this is from Jordan Peterson's podcast
and if you haven't heard RFK before, he's got a vocal condition called spasmodic dysphonia. The effects of which you will certainly notice. Listen to the anecdote. He tells you if you'd like to continue listening to this conversation,
ation, you'll need to subscribe at Sam Harris dot-org. Once you do you'll get access to all full-length episodes of The Making Sense podcast along with other subscriber, only content including bonus episodes and a Mas. And the conversations I've been having on the waking up app, the making sense podcast is ad-free and relies entirely on listener support and you can subscribe. Now at Sam Harris dot-org.
